Thursday, November 19, 2015

The End of October (Part 3 of 4)

for the thousand
year winter

On the floor, in front of the fire,
Paxton and his mother sat with the red book in between them. The mother turned
the pages—the boy pointed at each one with a reflection of that excitement he’d
had the first time he’d caught them. “This one is especially beautiful,” his
mother would say, or “look at that red! Why, I don’t think there was anything
quite that red in the city, do you?”

Of course, Lucy did not find much
interest in this. She preferred other books, and she preferred to read them in
more comfortable places than the floor. But Paxton smiled on and on. Every
color to him was different, in the firelight, and he felt as though he could
rediscover every single one. Sometimes they would come across a shape, on the
skin of the leaf, like they might have done once when looking at clouds.

Every now and then, if she happened to
encounter some truly exceptional shape, some color, she’d turn to her husband,
in his chair, and point it out to him with a childish tone and he’d lend a very
small portion of his smile. To him, they were really just leaves, just as they
had been to his sister, Edith. But they were more to her—and he reflected some
small part of her joy, if only at her enjoyment.

Doctor Melving was a quiet man. And
nobody knew if he’d always been that way, or if he’d learned it somewhere. He
didn't laugh much. If anything, this was his greatest fault—in the eyes of his son,
he was carved from stone. Of course, he hadn’t always been nearly so
stoic. His smile had once been nearly as quick as his little wife’s knitting
fingers.

If Paxton had paid more attention, he
might have noticed the commonality. But it’s hard to be observant of the things
that are important when you don’t know, until later, just how important they’ll
be—Nobody knows why. But that’s the way that it is sometimes. He saw the big
things, and even some of the little things. He saw the trees and the way that
the leaves fell. And as he watched them, the grass was wilting and the frost
was crunching under his boots and his father smiled less often, and he never
did notice until later.

And really, why would he have? Why should
he ever think to put those two and two together? Perhaps it is a point in favor
of his young innocence that he never did.

To be painfully honest—and really,
honesty is quite often painful—Paxton did not know his father all that well.
And really, this wasn’t is fault. Some men really don’t seem knowable.

He knew, of course, that he was a doctor,
and that he’d been a doctor in the army. He knew that, while in the army, his
father had been shot. But he knew this in the same way that a person can know
what mountains look like from books, having never actually seen them. (And
if you’ve ever seen mountains, you understand that those really aren’t the same
at all.)

What Paxton did know was that his
father and his father’s mustache had something in common; they were both very
serious, and that it took a great deal to stir either one into movement. They
were not cruel or angry—they were simply sober. His countenance and spirit had
been tempered by reason and science—and worse things, too.

Those very different eyes saw very
different things, when together father and son sat in the silent living room,
staring into the fire. To the boy, all was trees and falling leaves and gold, a
screeching and fluttering of color, launching up the chimney like bats made of
sparks.

The father saw cannons, in the distance.
He heard them, drumming behind him, roaring over his head. As the dark drew in
around them and spun cobwebs in the corners, he saw the spine of the sky
breaking and the rain pounding down, ringing against his helmet and echoing in
his ears like iron drums.

When the nights went cold and the sky
turned black, Paxton saw the frost lean in on the windows and stare between its
fingers in at the fire and the books. When his father looked, he saw pale and
dirty faces, between the trees.

Those eyes saw such different things. And
of course, one of them had seen death. And as Paxton would learn, the problem
with death is that it’s just sodamn contagious.

Like a yawn, inspiring those deep, tired
tremors, where there had been none before, and so that cruel, mortal awareness
stirs. A tremble, suddenly afraid of drifting off—and at once, welcoming the
thought.

Of course, Paxton had some understanding
of how a creature like Rosa had found him—and where, even. He had a picture in
his head of that field hospital, and of that even smaller, younger Rosa with an
apron on. He knew, to some degree, how the love of that tiny creature had done
something transforming to that terribly serious one. But he understood this to
the same degree that he understood war. (And his picture of it was as
incomplete as his picture of field hospitals.)

It was her joy that spilled into the
doctor, and that tempted him, even, to smile through the deep evening shadows.
But it was hard to smile then, even as he watched that laugh climb through her,
kicking to escape like a child under too many blankets, and finding its way out
her mouth, eyes and curls.

“There were trees that uncle showed me on
the other side of the ridge,” Paxton said excitedly, “like pine trees but gold.
And he said that they’d drop their needles, just like the trees here drop their
leaves. He said they only last a week or so like that, and then they’re all
gone. I’d have brought back a branch, but it wouldn’t fit in our book.”

The mother laughed. “No, I imagine it
wouldn’t have. I suppose that only leaves us with one option, doesn’t it? We’ll
have to come back and see them again next year.”

Paxton’s whole being seemed to light up.
“Can we?”

His mother pointed and whispered, “you’ll
have to ask your father.”

Paxton turned excitedly to his father.
“Can we, dad?” He asked.

There was a long, quiet moment—the father
stared not at Paxton, but at his wife, half-glowing in the firelight. The words
came out of him almost pained. “Every year,” he said, and he made his mouth
perform something very much like a smile. But colder.

Paxton was ecstatic. He turned to his
mother beaming, the words tumbling out of him in a flurry. “Then we can go and
see them together,” he said. “Uncle said that they don't ever die—that they
only fall asleep.”

“He’s right of course,” said the mother,
smiling. “Nothing really dies. Not ever. And that sleep never lasts forever.”
She reached out gently and pulled him into a hug, the fire dancing over the
leaves between them. “No matter how dark,” she said, “and no matter how cold,
just remember—the night ends.”

In the joining kitchen, the door swung
open and a flurry of cold air rushed in, skittering across the wood floor as
uncle entered, his beard parted by the same smile that creased his eyes in so
many places.

“Pax, lad,” he said happily, “I've a bit
to show you, here. Come.”

Paxton jumped up and ran to the door, his
uncle's hand on his shoulder. And there, in the rectangle of orange, with the
only blue spilling in around his little frame, he watched the snowflakes,
tumbling down through the branches.

The wind tiptoed across the grass; it
rustled the leaves and kicked them up, stuck to the bottoms of its feet. Fat,
white flakes, the size of dimes, performed a very clumsy newborn ballet against
the indigo epilogue of the autumn.

“Snow!” He shouted. “Snow!” And just like
that, in his bare feet, he leapt out into the leaves. He ran around the yard,
feeling the sting on his toes, knowing that they were turning as red as his
cheeks.

At the door, his little mother and her
beaming face appeared. And even when she needed her brother's help to get down
the step, she ran feebly out into the swirling whiteness. Her laugh escaped her
in heaps and drifts as her son took her hand and, for a brief moment,
regardless of cold, they danced in the building frost, and hardly even felt it
on their toes.

When they went back in, shivering and
glowing, Lucy and Edith had appeared as well. They were wrapped in blankets as
a household of eyes gathered to doors and windows and watched.

“Right on time,” said Hollis. “It always
storms like this at the end of October.”

They stood until Paxton's little eyes
started to droop, when those hands of his father, which one day would be his
own, fell on his shoulder, and the eyes of his mother, already so much like
his, settled smiling onto his face.

She took him to the living room, to the
red book, and they closed it together before the mother put a final kiss on his
forehead. “This book,” she said, “will help you through the winter. Even if it
feels a thousand years long. And even when all the leaves fade. You'll have
that hope inside you. Everything wakes up.”

And so he was taken off to bed. And when
the door to his little bedroom closed, he had no way of knowing that his mother
nearly fell over, outside it—or that the strong arms that had carried him to
bed so many times instead picked up his mother and took her to hers. And he had
no way of knowing that that bristling, serious mustache, so hesitant to smile,
was kissing her very pale forehead as gently as a falling snowflake, and that
those stone-carved cheeks would soon be wet. He didn't know. He didn't hear the
goodbyes that were said.

But of course, he saw that very obvious
one, scrawled across the sky outside, as he sat with his face against the
glass. He watched the snow, toppling down to join the leaves, so mesmerized by
the way things fall. He watched October slip away on a carpet of yesterday’s
gold—and he waited for morning to nudge him awake.

Not everybody runs out of time, you see.
Sometimes time runs out on us. Abandons us. Leaves us to ourselves and the
winter. Why? I don’t know. But sooner or later, I suppose that everybody has to
learn that the world hasn't ended—it’s only night time. And morning will
coming.

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About Me

My name is Jeff. I am a writer of words, and a servant of King Jesus. Lover of good books, great coffee, dear friends and sunshine, living in a world forged by words, in a land spun from golden summers and grey winters. I see things differently, and I write what I see.